A few days earlier, seven people were kidnapped and tortured with
hot irons over suspicions of sorcery in Papua New Guinea's
Southern Highlands province.

Last year, 29 people in the poor island nation located north of
Australia were arrested for killing and cannibalizing the brains
and genitals of seven people accused of sorcery.

And in February, Kepari Leniata, a 20-year-old mother in Papua
New Guinea's Western Highlands region, was accused of witchcraft
by the family of a 6-year-old boy who had recently died.

Leniata was stripped, bound, tortured with a hot iron, doused
with gasoline and burned to death on a pile of trash in broad
daylight in front of hundreds of onlookers, The
Associated Press reports.

The brutal killing was condemned by officials, including Prime
Minister Peter O'Neill, but no arrests of Leniata's killers were
made.

Superstitions exist worldwide

Papua New Guinea is hardly alone in its embrace of superstitions
about witchcraft, sorcery and other "black arts."

In Saudi Arabia, two housemaids were sentenced to 10 years in
prison and given 1,000 lashes each after a court found them
guilty of sorcery in May, Emirates
24/7 reports.

Throughout Tanzania, albinos have
been targeted for killings, because people with the congenital
condition are viewed as evil demons. Their body parts, however,
are believed to have magical powers — so they are often the
victims of mutilation.

"We are killed, we are hunted, we are chopped," albino activist
Josephat Torner told CNN.

And a civil aviation director in the southeastern African country
of Swaziland recently made headlines when he told a newspaper
that "a witch on a broomstick should not fly above the limit" of
492 feet (150 meters) established for small objects like kites,
toy helicopters and other airborne items.

Any witch caught flying higher than the limit will be arrested
and fined, according to the Times
Live.

Officials decry killings

Authorities and academics, however, are pushing back against the
rising tide of witchcraft-related killings, torture and other
crimes.

Australian National University this month convened a three-day
conference in Canberra on sorcery- and witchcraft-related
killings. Participants in the event included researchers,
human-rights activists, government officials and victims of
violence.

"It is reprehensible that women, the old and the weak in our
society should be targeted for alleged sorcery or wrongs that
they actually have nothing to do with," O'Neill told the AP.

In response, Papua New Guinea has repealed its 1971 Sorcery Act,
which criminalized "evil sorcery," known locally assanguma.

Papua New Guinea also brought back the death penalty for anyone
found guilty of murdering a suspected witch (a move that has been
condemned by groups including the United Nations and Amnesty
International).

Torner is now the subject of a documentary called "In the Shadow
of the Sun" (directed by Harry Freeland), which details the
plight of albinos in Africa.

"It's my dream in my life that people with albinism are respected
and given all rights which other human beings are being given,"
Torner told CNN.